It takes wit, to bear witness, the witty or wittiness of a person is required. Perhaps meaning that someone has to be consciously aware and discerning to be a bearer of witness.
When someone is at the end of their wits, they are mentally drained and exhausted. Wit is about mentality as well as state of mind.
In a way, you can jokingly say that the Witty bear wittiness.
To be witty means in some sense to know or have some background knowledge. the suffix ‘-ness’ relates to ‘the quality of’, meaning that ‘witness’ could mean ‘the quality of wit’ or ‘having the quality of knowing’.
As such, there is this key dynamic interplay between being able to be a conscious observer and witness.
Merely being at the same event is not enough for a witness testimony, if you don’t pay any attention or pay any mind or wit, then you may have no memory of the events that transpired. -Effectively a blind Witness.
Thus, we can imagine that to properly bear witness, one must know to some degree what they think to be true, and have a memory of that recollection of facts and details to the best of their subjective perspective to be cross referenced with other sources and accounts. A sort of knowledge and discernment.
A witness’s testimony is considered evidence, but it’s only evident to the person that witnessed it. It is self-evident to the witness. Evidence, to be treated as evidence needs to be filtered for subjectivity, and measure objectivity of the nature of things as they are and not merely how we think or perceive of them.
That’s an interesting dynamic, that evidence itself, regardless if it’s a crime scene or a double blind study in scientific journal, has to ultimately be reviewed by someone subjectively to interpret and reinterpret things. Thus, you could say that all of the the world is subjective as we try to establish what the ‘objective’ reality is. In doing so, we try to maintain a ‘truth’ grounded in base reality. Whether or not we succeed is a separate issue from our honest efforts.
In essence, bearing witness is something that we have to determine for ourself to be self evident when we bear witness to our own reality in the making. As we live life, we come to terms with our specific path and journey and map of reality. Sometimes we often fight and argue over our own interpretations of reality. Thus we are comparing mental maps and ideas with each other. Our own memories and personal truths and self-evident evidence that we are witness of.
That’s just the nature of things. The point is, the ultimate witness is the observer of all. That would be akin to an omniscient being.
However, the one that knows all your secrets and the one that pays attention to all the things you know. Outside of the belief of god, even if no one else knows, you know. The you that observes not only your life but your thoughts (and even you observing your self observing). Integrity and honoring that witness is a part of living with one’s self as well as embracing authenticity and truth. Knowing that you are the Grand Witness of your own life, you now know (or are re-minded), you now have the wit of knowing something that’s rather self evident but typically glossed over.
Epilogue
I had a few notes on the idea of witness and bearing witness. Asking things like how it relates to wit and what are the origins of it.
It seems that knowledge, truth, and discernment are important. It also appears that memory plays a much larger role in reality and identity and truth than what I once thought.
You can imagine truth like an arrow, to hit it’s target would be to fly true (true to mark). To know where it came from, to see where it is going, is akin to knowing the flight trajectory or causality of the arrow. And in order to know the past, you have to have memory of the history, and thus truth is related deeply with memory. Simply, if we don’t know where we came from, we have less clues in knowing where we’re going.
This is just a random thought or idea that popped up. For some reason, I felt great anger or unsettling feeling while writing about bearing witness to reality. Not sure why, it was odd, but I just pushed through and wrote more about the grand witness, the prime observer of our own individual pet realities, ourselves. It’s a rather important aspect of being a witness or observer. Even if no one else knows, I know. sort of thing.
Words Mean Things
Words Mean Things 
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